Developing a Baseline for Taxi Operations at US Domestic Airports

Abstract

Taxi times at the major US airports have been the focus of much research over the past few years. In 2010, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used one year of data at New York John F. Kennedy International (JFK) and Boston Logan International (BOS) Airports to develop a methodology to define equations for taxi-out times based on the number of departures and arrivals on the airport surface. The focus of this work has been to apply the MIT methodology to the FAA’s remaining 35 Operational Evolution Plan (OEP) airports with the motivation that this methodology could potentially be used to predict taxi-out times based on the number of movements and reduce excess taxi times by being implemented in surface traffic management techniques. Several regression approaches were examined. To assess the benefits pool, unimpeded taxi times are subtracted from total taxi times for each of the airports; this could then be used to prioritize airports, avionics, and ground infrastructure technologies to mitigate some of the excess fuel burn. In the future the authors would like to apply this methodology to characterize taxi-out times at airports and evaluate benefits, not only for the US, but also for airports around the world.